1995-07-14 04:00:00 PDT Washington -- Ending weeks of tortured negotiations, President Clinton yesterday reluctantly approved the recommendations of the base closure commission that will eventually lead to the shutdown or realigning of eight California facilities, including McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento.

But in an unexpected move to soften the blow, the Pentagon agreed to keep McClellan open, with most of its 14,000 employees on its payroll until 2001. At that time, the base will be turned over to a private contractor who will hire thousands of the remaining employees to do the same work they are doing now.

As expected, Clinton also approved recommendations that include shutting the Oakland Army Base, with its 2,200 military and civilian employees, and shrinking the size of the Onizuka Air Station in Sunnyvale. Also on the list was the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, where 13,000 workers are employed.

Congress must now vote to reject the entire list within 45 days, or it will automatically take effect.

The president's decision came as a bitter disappointment to California lawmakers, including many from his own party, who had

hoped that Clinton would be the first president in four rounds of base closures to revise the commission's list of proposed closures.

"This is a big letdown for California," said Senator Dianne Feinstein, who had spearheaded the fight to keep the California facilities open. "I did my level best (to convince the president), but clearly it was not enough."

In the drawn-out discussions in recent weeks, the biggest stumbling block to keeping McClellan open was the apparent unwillingness of the eight-member commission to revise its recommendations, officials close to the discussions said.

The White House concluded that if the president had sent the list back to the commission, the panel would have returned it to him unchanged. The president would then have been faced with the same political dilemma of accepting or rejecting the entire list of 132 facilities recommended for closure or realignment.

In a strange reversal of Washington custom, Clinton did not try to put the best face on his decision yesterday and instead recited a litany of complaints about the commission's work. Saying that he was convinced that California had been unfairly treated in the closure process, he seemed to lay out a rationale for rejecting the recommendations instead of accepting them.

"In the first three rounds, California sustained 52 percent of the job losses," he said. "In this recommendation, they will lose almost 50 percent of the jobs, even though they only have 15 percent of the soldiers and twice the unemployment rate of the rest of the country."

Secretary of Defense William Perry also landed a few punches, saying that the costs of carrying out the commission's recommendations "both in military readiness and dollars" would be substantially higher than under the Pentagon's original proposals.

Rudy de Leon, undersecretary of the Air Force, stressed yesterday that McClellan would stay open until 2001 and that 8,700 of its current civilian workforce of 11,000 would be on its payroll until then. He also did his best to rebut skepticism of the privatization plan.

"We are committed to making this a success," he said. "The key is to continue to operate McClellan with the quality and the efficiency and the expertise that has made it a very capable base."

He said the Pentagon had calculated that in 2001 a private contractor would hire half of the base's workers to do the same work they are currently doing for the Air Force. The Pentagon would help Sacramento develop other commercial enterprises at the base that could hire the remaining workers.

He said the Pentagon had experienced success with privatization at Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma, which is now operated by a private contractor. He said the Sacramento Army Depot was another example of successful privatization, where an electronics firm is using the base for commercial purposes.

However, Feinstein and others were less sure about the plan's prospects. In a tepid endorsement of the plan, she said: "I'll do my level best to make lemonade out of a lemon."

Senator Barbara Boxer, who also had put extreme pressure on Clinton to keep McClellan and other California bases open, said she had "grave doubts" about the plan. "But I will do everything I can to insist that that promise becomes a reality."

Pressed by a reporter, Representative Vic Fazio, a key Democratic leader, lashed out at the president for what he said was a lack of "guts" to reject the commission's recommendations.

But he said the nearly 8,700 jobs that will stay at McClellan are about the same number that would have remained on the base had the Air Force gone through normal downsizing. He said that next week a "McClellan Economic Summit" of elected officials, business leaders from Sacramento and top Pentagon officials would meet in Washington to begin planning. Clinton has indicated a willingness to meet with the group.

"We have been given a chance to find a future -- it is in our hands, it is in our community's," he said. "We can be unhappy, we can even be angry, but we can't lose sight that we have an opportunity, and we have to make the best of it."

As to the political fallout of yesterday's action, Clinton angrily rejected a question from a reporter who suggested that the reason it had taken so long to come to a decision was that the White House was weighing the effect on next year's presidential elections in California.

"You tell me my concern is political?" Clinton responded. "I am tired of these arguments about politics. My political concern is the political economy of America and what happens to the people in these communities."

CLOSUREA AND REALIGNMENTS

California bases approved by President Clinton for closing or realignment:

AIR FORCE DEPOTS

-- CLOSE -- McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento. A ground communications group moves to Tobyhanna Army Depot, Pa.

SATELLITE CONTROL

-- REALIGN -- Onizuka Air Station in Sunnyvale. Some functions move to Falcon AFB, Colo.

AMMUNITION STORAGE

PORTS

-- CLOSE -- Oakland Army Base

MINOR FACILITIES

-- CLOSE -- East Fort Baker -- CLOSE -- Rio Vista U.S. Army Reserve Center -- CLOSE -- Branch U.S. Disciplinary Barracks in Lompoc

OPERATIONAL AIR STATIONS

-- REALIGN -- Alameda Naval Air Station. Action changes a 1993 closure decision by redirecting assets at the air station to the Naval Air Facility in Corpus Christi, Texas, Mine Warfare Center of Excellence, Naval Station Ingleside, Texas, and other locations.

NAVAL SHIPYARDS

-- CLOSE -- Long Beach Naval Shipyard -- CLOSE -- Supervisors of Shipbuilding, Conversion and Repair in Long Beach. Action closes a 19-person function attached to the Long Beach shipyard. -- CLOSE -- Oakland Fleet Industrial Supply Center

TECHNICAL CENTERS

-- CLOSE -- Naval Personnel Research and Development Center in San Diego. Relocates functions to the Bureau of Naval Personnel in Memphis and the Naval Air Warfare Center, Training Systems Division, in Orlando, Fla. -- CLOSE -- Naval Command, Control and Ocean Surveillance Center In-Service Engineering West Coast Division, in San Diego. Some functions move to Navy facilities in Point Loma.